


Pygalgia

by SincerelyChaos



Series: Verbose [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Painplay, Riding Crops, Sexual Content, ambiguous consent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 18:44:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4798358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SincerelyChaos/pseuds/SincerelyChaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The real pain doesn't come from the broken skin.</p><p>It comes from one single touch to the skin that's still untouched (<i>unharmed</i>).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pygalgia

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a series of (odd little) ficlets, each ficlet written as an attempt to illustrate the rare or obscure word in its title. See 'Verbose' series. The definition of 'Pygalgia' can be found in the end note.
> 
> ***
> 
> All my gratitude to the beta heroes iriswallpaper and Hubblegleeflower, who make me really focus on what's written, allowing me new perspectives and new knowledge on both writing and The English Language. And some very interesting discussions indeed... Thank you!!

 

  
  


_Awareness_.

It slides. Slowly, _so slowly_ \- - - dips in between his fingers, traces them. Strokes the back of his hand, draws circles on the inside of his wrist. The tip of the crop slowly dragged up his arm, lingering just a moment before following the trapezius muscle and pauses on the juncture of neck and shoulder.

One ~~fixed~~ point.  
One _shifting_ point.

( _How something so light can be so terrifying and feel so dark--_ )

Sherlock breathes. Slow, conscious breaths. He needs air. Can’t afford to forget breathing when there’s a faint pressure - a shifting, tiny point where all his senses are focused - dipping between the tendons at his nape. He must breathe, because if he gets any more lightheaded than this he won’t be able to hold himself up much longer.

John’s presence - it’s something he senses rather than something tangible. In his adrenaline-submerged brain the essence John is focused into a single point of contact; migrating to wherever the leather tip meets his own over-sensitive skin.

 _Spine_. Bumping over each vertebrae - Sherlock can feel thrills shooting out through every spinal nerve that branches off from in-between each and every vertebrae as the crop dips into the hollows and then climbs up the next rise. Warmth and electricity lighting up every dermatome as the tingling sensation spreads into yet another nerve branch - moving from thoracal vertebrae and into the lumbar region and slowly approaching the area from which the peripheral nerves connected to genital areas branches from his spinal cord.

Is this how fear manifests in his body? As warmth and tingling radiating, following each and every area affected by the nerves that have not - _yet_ \- had to transfer any signals of pain? A divination of the pulsing, stinging heat that will soon--

As the crop reaches his sacrum, its movements goes from painfully slow to ultra rapid. It’s almost almost impossible not to let his own breathing give him away.

(You _can_ smell terror, he knows this. Predatory instincts. _Survival_.)

He’s aware - _so very acutely aware_ \- of how the folded leather moves further down, traces the cleft of his buttocks, slowly approaching--

 

One breath. One single breath - taken too suddenly or too hissed - finally gives him away. It’s just as the tip of the crop reaches furled skin. A muscle twitch of the sphincter, an involuntary hitch of breath, and the tip stills just there.

 

A moment of stillness.

( _Trepidation_.)

 

Contact breaks. Suddenly, there is nothing caressing his skin anymore. Not now that the crop has been lifted and his only contact with anything but the sheet under his knees, shins and instep is limited to the air surrounding him.

(It’s not the pain. It’s the waiting. It’s the not knowing.)

Breathing. Once, twice-- air is heavy when you become too aware of how many muscles are used to expand and contract your lungs.

Breathing. _Until_ \--

 

The sound hits him before the pain does.

 

A sharp smack as leather flattens out against living skin. Almost a relief.

Then comes the heat. As soon as he registers the heat, he knows that-- yes. There. The pain. The pain always follows just a few milliseconds after the first notion of heat. Different grade of myelination of the efferent nerves allows different sensory data to reach his consciousness in various velocities. The signal of pain will always be the last one to reach the brain.

He lets it out. The breath, the yelp. The flinch of his body.

There’s no longer any use in remaining in control. It’s taken now. With every blow that will follow, it will be smacked and hit out of him, seeping out through his skin. As long as he remains steady - his hands clutching the headboard and his knees holding him up - he's allowed to react.

( _It shouldn’t feel so much like relief_.)

Next blow hits just below his buttock, the sensitive area where gluteus muscles meets biceps femoris. It’s enough to make him drop his head between his arms, let it hang until the next blow - right in the middle of his left cheek - makes it jolt back up reflexively.

 

 _Awareness_.

He is still so aware. It will hurt less as soon as his awareness begins to drift. As soon as endorphins finally flood his blood and make his thoughts and senses hazy.

Awareness sometimes feels too much like pain.

Extinguish one pain with another. His focus shreds just like his skin.

The pain on his buttocks doesn't fade just because the blows have stopped. It takes him several seconds to even realise that the crop has been dropped to the floor, and that John - the presence behind him that he knows as John - is touching him with his own hands now, not with the extension that the riding crop offers.

Pain can transform into many different shapes. Light touches on badly bruised skin. Firm grip on fever-warm iliac crests.  Fingers working a tense sphincter open. The stretch as two fingers are joined by a third. Loss of contact as fingers withdraws. Hesitant movements behind him, then at his side. A hand pulling his hair, his head tilted up. Then, the most acute kind of pain; a soft, swift caress of lips against his own untouched (unharmed) lips.

The tingling on his lips blocks out all other sensations and Sherlock wants it to stop, because it feels too much like awareness and not enough like release. Of all the pain John gives him, this is the only one that feels truly sardonic. It’s three point six seconds of something almost unbearable, then John is moving back to behind Sherlock.

After just a few moments, he forgets his lips, forgets everything but the pain of intrusion and the jolt his body makes as John's pelvis slaps against his bruised buttocks in a rapid, forceful rhythm.

It's not the pleasure, it's the absence of new pain that causes orgasm to feel like release. More endorphins, a flood of oxytocin. Everything fades, goes numb, even his over-sensitive skin.

One last flinch as John pulls out, finally sated after fucking Sherlock relentlessly long after Sherlock had come, long after hypersensitivity had set in. The discomfort so mixed up with pain that it all blurred, making it possible not to ask John to stop.

One last gasp of pain as he can finally slump down from his kneeling position, feeling the soreness of his muscles and the painful stretch of broken skin.

John, slumped beside him, has gone soft. No longer demanding anything, just looking at Sherlock, panting, through half-closed lids, sticky with sweat and crimson from straining physical activity and vasodilation. There's nothing threatening about John like this. Still, this is where Sherlock is at a loss as to how to behave. There are no rules set up for afterwards.

Resting on his front, Sherlock allows himself a glance at the humid skin in front of him, watching the skin move over muscles and bones as John breathes heavily. Unbroken skin, untouched skin.

And John turns around, then, looking at him, letting a hesitant finger stroke sweaty hair from Sherlock's face. Sherlock doesn't move, can't move, the pain in his buttocks to fierce to attempt anything but this position. So John moves. One quick press of lips, uneven breath, warmth transferring from skin to skin. Like this - with John already having taken what he wants and with the knowledge that no more pain will be inflicted - that touch feels less like a taunt, and more like a whisper of something he’s yet to understand.

 

Awareness.

( _Suddenly, it feels just a bit less like pain_.)

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

>  **Pygalgia** \- py·gal·gi·a  
>  (pī-gal'jē-ă),
> 
>  **Rarely used term meaning pain in the buttocks.**  
>  [pyg- + G. algos, pain]


End file.
